Critics » Steve Persall » Fresh
Steve Persall

Steve Persall

Agrees with the Tomatometer 77% of the time.

Publications:
Tampa Bay Times
Critics' Group:
Florida Film Critics Circle, Southeastern Film Critics Association
Total Reviews:
357

Best Reviewed Films

Showing 1 - 50 of 353
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Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
A 56% Man of Steel (2013) " This is not your father's Superman, but he could be your mom's." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jun 13, 2013
A 87% Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) " Yes, this one is even better: funnier, brawnier and ingeniously constructed for appeal to both devoted fans and reluctant converts." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted May 16, 2013
A 77% 42 (2013) " The movie is a home run, and Ford is a grand ham." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Apr 11, 2013
A 94% Amour (2012) " This is a movie almost too painful to watch at times, yet so masterfully composed and acted - Riva absolutely deserves her Oscar nomination, while Trintignant was robbed - that it's impossible to turn away. " — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Feb 19, 2013
A 93% Zero Dark Thirty (2013) " We know the ending, yet remain mesmerized by familiar details, filmed with a harrowing sense of urgency. It's as close to being in the White House situation room that night, watching a closed-circuit broadcast, as anyone could expect." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Feb 9, 2013
A 92% Silver Linings Playbook (2012) " Russell crafts a Baker Act romance playing loose and eccentric with the genre. The banter is spikier, wacky sidekicks have issues, too, and Pat and Tiffany's obstacles aren't fluff. The screws are tighter, and the movie is a ball." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Nov 21, 2012
A 94% The Sessions (2012) " Not just another weepy drama of overcoming odds, a My Left Foot with a different appendage. The Sessions is often brazenly funny, not from shocking dialogue but characters reacting the way people do, especially with such a flustering subject as sex." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Nov 15, 2012
A 92% Skyfall (2012) " Let's lay the baccarat cards on the table: Skyfall is the greatest James Bond adventure since Goldfinger. If that seems impossible after 50 years, 23 movies and six actors playing the secret agent, think of how thrilling it is to watch it happen." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Nov 9, 2012
A 96% Argo (2012) " Argo is a supremely constructed popcorn flick, a political thriller taut as piano wire and a Hollywood satire funnier than most comedies on the subject." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Oct 11, 2012
A 85% The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) " (The movie is) set in 1991, in a small town where high school culture is a John Hughes movie, with all the confusion, '80s music and hip ennui that implies. " — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Oct 3, 2012
A 85% The Master (2012) " The Master feels like few movies have, except the director's own and a few of Stanley Kubrick's, languid as a trance and mesmerizing in its unpredictability." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Sep 20, 2012
A 86% Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) " Director Behn Zeitlin and co-writer Lucy Alibar crafted a small miracle here, a delicate mix of hardscrabble fact and childish fantasy, tapping the poetry of ignorance from the perspective of a child." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jul 25, 2012
A 56% Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012) " a movie surprisingly rich in humor and heart." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jun 27, 2012
A 97% Monsieur Lazhar (2012) " Monsieur Lazhar becomes a deeply affecting film not for pathos but for the way sadness is conveyed so subtly. It's a small triumph of restrained compassion, coaxing throat lumps rather than jerking tears." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted May 3, 2012
A 92% The Cabin in the Woods (2012) " I've always wondered how people in horror flicks make such terminally stupid decisions... and where the old coot predicting doom gets his information. This movie answers, in a freaky-gory manner so far off-the-wall that it could be a coffee table." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Apr 11, 2012
A 88% Six Degrees of Separation (1993) " A mystery wrapped inside an enigmatic nation, flawlessly acted and difficult to predict. I'm always impressed when a movie informs about a foreign culture while it entertains, and this one is powerful art in that regard. " — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Mar 2, 2012
A 98% The Artist (2011) " Hazanavicius crafted more than a replica of the silent era... a masterwork that likely won't be imitated. How many movies in 2011 can you say that about? Only the best one." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Dec 23, 2011
A 75% The Adventures of Tintin (2011) " Spielberg's first animated film ever is constantly surprising for many reasons, the lack of familiarity a key one. Close behind is his conquering chronic issues of mo-cap animation, in regard to how real in appearance humans as cartoons should be." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Dec 23, 2011
A 80% Young Adult (2011) " Young Adult is comedy at its darkest, with the added discomfort of making the worst person in the movie also its most magnetic. That's a daredevil act for everyone involved, including the audience." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Dec 15, 2011
A 96% The Muppets (2011) " It's not easy bein' clean in pop culture when a phony TV reality show called Punch Teacher isn't impossible to believe... The world today is no place for The Muppets, which is exactly why we need them." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Nov 23, 2011
A 89% The Descendants (2011) " Clooney has never been better, displaying more range and less actor-ego than ever before... The Descendants would still be a splendid movie without him; with Clooney, it's one of 2011's very best." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Nov 23, 2011
A 93% Take Shelter (2011) " This is the movie M. Night Shyamalan wishes he could make, a thriller set in the twilight zone of a disturbed mind. Quite simply, it is one of 2011's best." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Nov 16, 2011
A 93% 50/50 (2011) " 50/50 is sentimental but never too much. Not with this cast. It's irreverent about cancer and that could be inspirational. And it's surely one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen all year. " — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Sep 29, 2011
A 84% A Better Life (2011) " What sounds like a typical ethnic melodrama becomes something special in A Better Life, one of the finest films of 2011, so far. It reminds me of Winter's Bone, with its mesmerizing immersion into an overlooked culture and gut-tightening suspense. " — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jul 20, 2011
A 96% Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (2011) " Words have an inexhaustible magic, wise old Albus Dumbledore proclaims in the final stanza of author J.K. Rowling's epic Harry Potter series. As it happens, the same must be said now for the eight films adapted from her books." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jul 13, 2011
A 88% Buck (2011) " ... makes you want to be a better person,closer in calmly authoritative spirit to Buck Brannaman. When he strides on screen, there's something mystical about this Wyoming cowboy, whose saddle posture could model for a Frederic Remington sculpture." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jul 7, 2011
A 70% Horrible Bosses (2011) " Red band trailers don't suggest how low this movie stoops for laughs, or reveal how diabolically it turns the 9 to 5 fantasy of murdering an employer into screwball hilarity. Think of The Hangover as directed by Alfred Hitchcock and get the idea." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jul 7, 2011
A 92% Incendies (2011) " "Childhood is a knife stuck in your throat," a dead woman's will informs her twin children. "It can't be easily removed." The siblings will discover that knife is double-edged on an odyssey to discover their roots." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jun 9, 2011
A 93% Midnight in Paris (2011) " At a time when wedding parties gone wild is the plot du jour in movie comedies, it's reassuring to know that Woody Allen's cerebral absurdity is still intact." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jun 9, 2011
A 82% Super 8 (2011) " Super 8 is worth the extra effort to remain in the dark, so its old-school popcorn delights stay fresh. Abrams is dealing with an alien, but what he's really fiddling with is time travel, back to the '80s when kids hadn't yet seen it all. " — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jun 9, 2011
A 72% Rio (2011) " Bursting with color and rippling with samba rhythms, Rio makes you wonder why animated films haven't spent more time in Brazil. The place is tailor-made for a 'toon, with rainforest birds and Carnival revelers alike in gloriously surreal plumage." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Apr 14, 2011
A 88% Rango (2011) " Minutes into the audaciously animated Rango, I wondered whether someone had slipped peyote into my soft drink... This movie is obviously not right in the head, and I love it." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Mar 8, 2011
A 90% The Illusionist (L'illusionniste) (2010) " Chomet adapted an unproduced screenplay by Jacques Tati, whom Tatischeff resembles and, in a meta moment, sees when he ducks into a theater showing Tati's Mon Oncle. It is just one simple amusement in a lovingly crafted film of plenty." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Feb 9, 2011
A 88% Blue Valentine (2010) " A reminder that well-measured and expertly acted pain can be as thrilling to watch as 3-D spectacle." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jan 27, 2011
A 86% Rabbit Hole (2010) " What makes Rabbit Hole remarkable is the way it never does what you think it will do." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jan 12, 2011
A 98% Inside Job (2010) " Inside Job contains too much hard evidence to be dismissed as a conspiracy theory, and enough bipartisan blame to dodge the "liberal rant" label. It is a profoundly important film to see, and when was the last time any movie was that?" — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Nov 12, 2010
A 81% Catfish (2010) " Facebook must be blushing this week about the release of two films focused on the darker side of all those glowing computer screens. Between The Social Network and Catfish, some of Facebook's 500 million members may think twice about logging on." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Sep 30, 2010
A 96% The Social Network (2010) " This is a remarkable film for more reasons than its antihero... It's a movie as much in the moment as your computer's home page, which for millions of users is Facebook." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Sep 30, 2010
A 73% Piranha 3-D (2010) " Hands down and body parts floating, the most irresistibly sick movie in years is Piranha 3D, which should be retitled Piranha 3D, Double-D and C for all the topless cuties director Alexandre Aja feeds the fish and audience." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Aug 20, 2010
A 96% Restrepo (2010) " Restrepo is a bracing difference from the neatly packaged accounts that mainstream media coverage typically provides. You don't have to be a hawk or a dove to appreciate its unvarnished honesty." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Aug 4, 2010
A 94% Winter's Bone (2010) " Winter's Bone perfectly captures a hardscrabble setting some of us drive past on two-lane roads, wondering how people live that way." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jul 8, 2010
A 99% Toy Story 3 (2010) " What Pixar does better than any other artistic source is make us believe, including the notion that a fourth Toy Story, if it ever happens, would be even more carefully perfected than this." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jun 18, 2010
A- 93% The Sapphires (2013) " Even when it seems contrived The Sapphires is a feel-good movie in the most positive meaning of that term, thanks to the Motown music and O'Dowd's cheeky charm. Like the Four Tops, I loved every sugar pie, honey bunch moment. I can't help myself." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted May 3, 2013
A- 81% The Place Beyond The Pines (2013) " The Place Beyond the Pines has an unpretentious power that sneaks up on viewers; it's over before you realize it's one of the year's finer films so far." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Apr 11, 2013
A- 95% West of Memphis (2012) " In the end it won't matter if this is the fourth movie about the same subject; you can never learn its lessons often enough." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Mar 1, 2013
A- 84% Side Effects (2013) " Nobody in Side Effects except perhaps the victim is who they seem to be, while Soderbergh and Burns tease and tug the rug from under the audience, never yanking it. Smart moves, smart movie." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Feb 9, 2013
A- 78% Flight (2012) " Denzel Washington's boldest, against-type role since Training Day... a tightly wound production, Zemeckis' first live-action work since Cast Away and, after admirably failing to make motion-capture animation the next big thing, one of his finest." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Oct 31, 2012
A- 93% Looper (2012) " Time travel makes sense in Looper because writer-director Rian Johnson keeps it on a short leash, not requiring enough manufactured logic to trip over later." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Oct 3, 2012
A- 74% Prometheus (2012) " Scott briskly blends the high-minded stuff with impressive boo-and-goo sequences, ratcheting tension in tight spots and dark caverns. One set piece should become a new milestone in horror, as John Hurt's tummy trouble did in Alien." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Jun 6, 2012
A- 83% Warrior (2011) " It's a movie with as much heart as violence, somewhat cliched and calculated but still an exhilarating screen experience. You wouldn't believe how good this movie is, and I wouldn't blame you." — Tampa Bay Times
Posted Sep 9, 2011
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